THE REVOLUTIONARY HAIRCUT
The Revolutionary HaircutFaded umber, amber and emerald swaths delineate Conor Kelly’s paintings, charting out an ambiguous world. Like a sunken ship that lies below the surface, I glimpse the lay of the land through waves of gently drawn blues and greens. As defined as this hilly vision is though, there is no horizon. There are no trees, skies, cresting cliffs or any such landmarks to guide my eye. The picture plane is not ever explicitly defined as a landscape but I relate to it as one.
When I come away from these works, I am struck by a sense of absence. It feels as if something is missing but I cannot place what it is. This feeling of absence resonates throughout the body of work that is presented in 'The Revolutionary Haircut'. From the empty, antique easel to the tombstone-like granite slab that is stubbing out dried barley, to the pig’s hoof forever tainted by its dissection from the rest of the pig. I encounter an ever present and subtle hollow. It reminds me of something that Thierry de Cordier wrote about his own recent exhibition at Marion Goodman in Paris, 2007.
“From a philosophical perspective, the question is, at any rate, of the « self » understood as a lack. If not an excess.
Above all, I would like the viewer to be able to look and to listen to these paintings the same way as one listens to a musical score. And may they release the silence which inhabits them...” Thierry de Cordier
Kelly’s paintings in this instance are impregnated with silence as well. His dubious interest in landscape is undeniable. Perhaps more tenuous but still relevant is his interest in historical painting. Most succinctly, Kelly is fascinated by the position of power that these modes of production engage even as he struggles against them. He is instinctually suspicious of the drapery and mechanism of historical painting (as many of us are). Yet he seems haunted by its force. It is as though he covets elements of the French Romantic’s grand, contestable history while simultaneously striving to avoid the tropes of that very same medium.
As there were no court painters in late 18th century Ireland, Kelly is left without his own academic precedent or hierarchy to do battle or corroborate with. His installations are not merely a reflection of and comment on this lack; they are an articulation of his guilty obsession with a mode of making that he can neither entirely condone nor deny.
The theatricality in Kelly’s work manifests in a decidedly ridiculous manner. The contrast between foreground and background is explicitly distinctive. Instead of martyrs, monarchs, victors, revolutionaries and Gods we find blobs, gashes and ghostly apparitions sitting on top of his forested backdrops. Swirling pink miniature swaths of paint taunt us. Crustacean orbs and gelatin lassos are unevenly drawn and awkwardly placed.
Lets think for a moment about the relationship between foreground and background as a theatrical technique used by painters like Géricault (1791-1824). Think of 'The Raft of Medusa' (1819) in which we move straight from the great figures in the foreground, to background of the painting. In Kelly’s works the middle ground, which is barely acknowledged by Géricault, becomes almost irrelevant.
Kelly produces self-conscious works. The lush, lucid colors draw us into imagined, pseudo - archetypal landscapes while traces of drawing and erasure reaffirm the flat, cartoon like surface of the work. No matter how hard these pink swallows try to deny the inference of a landscape though, they never totally negate the spatial distinctions within the work. And Kelly wouldn’t have it any other way. These works are not about a resistance to something so much as the admission of an allegiance to a flawed precedent that must be undermined by a humorous hand.
Kelly’s works secretly refer to a make-believe history, a map so vast it could only be ordained through steady observation. He is remaking the tradition from which he abstains. I imagine Kelly pouring over books of paintings, walking the country side, squatting in museums, sketching, stretching canvas: meticulously honing his craft, giggling to himself while he tenuously erases the evidence of his own narrative from our eyes.
“And You May Ask Yourself
How Do I Work This?
And You May Ask Yourself
Where Is That Large Automobile?
And You May Tell Yourself
This Is Not My Beautiful House!
And You May Tell Yourself
This Is Not My Beautiful Wife!
Letting The Days Go By/Let The Water Hold Me Down
Letting The Days Go By/Water Flowing Underground
Into The Blue Again/After The Money's Gone
Once In A Lifetime/Water Flowing Underground.
Same As It Ever Was...Same As It Ever Was...Same As It Ever Was...
Same As It Ever Was...Same As It Ever Was...Same As It Ever Was...
Same As It Ever Was...Same As It Ever Was...”
So go the lyrics for the Talking Heads song, 'Once In A Lifetime'. In the music video, David Byrne sings live on stage under dramatic but simple lighting. His movements are trance-like. A preacher inspired the song and the movements were inspired and developed by studying the limited scope of a marionette and epileptic seizures. Throughout the video, Byrne’s actions echo the posturing of an evangelist or a self-help guru with such force that we are swallowed up in the momentum of his performance.
“Same As It Ever Was...Same As It Ever Was...Same As It Ever Was...”
As Byrne repeats the line, his left hand taps rhythmically, mechanically along his right arm as if running down a list. It is a decisive action that reaffirms the authority of his words and his stage presence. Byrne becomes the preacher and the marionette all at once even though we know he is neither. He appears to be channeling a greater power and in doing so – becomes one. These movements have become as iconic as the song. The fact that the video was choreographed by Toni Basel and that the movements, so associated with Byrne the icon, were not originally his own hardly seems to matter.
By mocking the manner of the landscape, Kelly inevitably comes close to producing one as well. Behind his thick jokes a sweeping vastness is revealed. The humor in Kelly’s practice antagonizes and compliments the seriousness of his pursuit. It is as though he is engaged in a constant effort to undermine his own dedication. And so we become witness to Kelly’s subtle dementia. It is the outcome of a miraculous coupling between a great absence and an inclination towards the absurd.
Alhena Katsof, 2009